Kevin Pezzi, MD

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

NOTE: Several family members were brutally slaughtered recently, so I will take a break from writing. Their deaths erased my affinity for writing about politics or the economy, thus I'll later limit myself to health and brainpower in addition to completing my book on rapidly overcoming racism and bigotry. BTW, the two men who murdered my father are still on the lam; I am offering up to $100,000 for information leading to their arrest and conviction.

The collapse of the U.S. economy: inevitable unless we do this

When I wrote about politics in the first edition of True Emergency Room Stories and Fascinating Health Secrets, it may have seemed out of place to some people, but politics and medicine are inseparable in the United States. I knew that if what I saw in the ER was an accurate microcosm of what happened around the nation, we were wasting vast amounts of money not just in defensive medicine, but also catering to oddballs with bizarre requests and showering more money on people than they had paid into the system. I put 2 and 2 together and projected that the United States was headed for bankruptcy that would end in civil war, which I referred to as “an internecine struggle of heretofore unseen magnitude.” I figured that folks smart enough to understand demographics and economics would also be intelligent enough to know that “internecine struggle of heretofore unseen magnitude” = “civil war,” and civil war = the end of the USA, which will split into separate nations.

That prediction may have once seemed ludicrous, but it doesn't any longer. In a radio interview on Bob Brinker's Moneytalk, Thomas Mackell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, discussed the possibility of intergenerational warfare in the United States. In From Bailout to Bliss, I wrote about how some very prominent people, including high-ranking politicians, are predicting the same thing. Without a miracle or an endless supply of pixie dust, not one economist or politician can plausibly explain how we can repay our national debt and meet our future unfunded obligations: $130 trillion and rapidly growing.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels warned the United States faces a “survival-level threat” if its national debt isn't quickly reduced. He said, “Mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin. There's no other outcome arithmetically possible.” Daniels said we're already in too deep of a hole to dig our way out with only tax increases or service cuts, so we must encourage private-sector economic growth and reform entitlement programs. In another article, I explained how we could do the latter without hurting anyone. Without my plan, or something comparable (good luck trying to think of one that could do as much with zero pain), many millions of people will suffer from draconian cutbacks, and we'll still go broke.

The size of the United States economy does not make it immune to the laws of economics, so predicting that our nation will collapse now seems like a no-brainer. However, when I made that prediction in 1998, our economy was booming and outwardly healthy, yet I knew that a dangerous cancer was growing. I wanted to warn others of this looming disaster, so I revealed some of the egregious ways our money was being wasted. Little did I know at the time how our government was wasting money in thousands of other ways.

While our economic problems are worse than I thought in '98, we might be able to avert an economic meltdown if we implement outside-the-box ways to stimulate our economy by enhancing innovation and productivity. I mentioned some of those solutions in From Bailout to Bliss and my blog, but most people seem wedded to inside-the-box remedies, such as cutting taxes and regulation. As a proponent of smaller government, I think that less taxes and regulation would help, but expecting them to fix our monumental economic problems is like expecting vitamins to save a terminally ill cancer patient.

I agree with liberals on some issues but not economics, because as a group they favor big government, which will prove to be the kiss of death for the U.S. economy. While I favor giving money to those who need help, I've seen far too many instances of giving money to people who simply want it because they want to sit on their butts while you work to support them (such as ex-welfare cheat Star Parker, author of Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats: From Welfare Cheat to Conservative Messenger) or they want to spend their money on other things.

However, it isn't just liberal Democrats who are burdening us with debt we can't repay, because most Republican Congressmen and Presidents have their own pet ways of digging our economic hole deeper, such as endless wars we can't afford. Thus, I am no fan of Republicans OR Democrats. We have the illusion of choice, not real choice. Democrats and Republicans are really two wings of the same Big Government party, both of which (despite their campaign rhetoric) have been remarkably effective in expanding the power of the federal government while progressively reducing the freedom of American citizens.

The endless wars we cannot afford

If money grew on trees, spending trillions of dollars fighting terrorists, suspected terrorists, and other enemies around the world would be a good idea. The problem, of course, is that money doesn't grow on trees. We're spending a fortune to fight the estimated 100 al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. This war, and others like it, almost certainly makes us more secure now, but at a catastrophic future cost. As I mentioned in From Bailout to Bliss, we are rapidly nearing the day when we must choose between domestic spending and defense spending.

By 2025, every dollar of federal revenue will be spent paying interest on the national debt and entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. This means that there will be NO money left to pay for defense, highways, air traffic control, education, job training, agriculture, science, energy, community development, international relations, world hunger, the environment, federal law enforcement/courts/prisons, and the many other functions of the federal government, which range from essential to ludicrous and a flagrant waste of money. If other countries are still dumb enough to lend us money, they will demand increasingly high interest rates, which will only compound our problem. Alternatively, if we pay for national defense, many millions of elderly and disabled people will suffer and die from poverty that now seems unimaginable.

Here's an analogy to clarify this predicament: Let's say a single woman living in a bad area sought to increase her security by purchasing a super-duper alarm system and replacing her windows with bullet-proof glass covered with iron bars. That's fine if she could afford it, but what if she were bankrupted by buying more than she could afford? She might go from a reasonably—but not perfectly—secure home to a highly insecure cardboard box or park bench.

This is what will soon happen in the United States. For a marginal improvement in current security, we will end up with no security unless the government uses its iron fist to impoverish us to continue funding our armed forces. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, and Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican, are smart enough to realize that our War on Terror will ultimately slit our own throats and put us in a cardboard box or six feet under.

So what shall we do when 2025 rolls around? Let our enemies kick sand in our faces, or let people starve in the streets?

In From Bailout to Bliss, I mentioned how Marine hero General Smedley Butler said that he eventually realized how he had spent most of his time “being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it.”

If you study American history with your eyes open, you may see how skilled our leaders are in manipulating public opinion to drum up enthusiastic support for fighting overseas. They're now making the War on Terror seem like the only reasonable thing to do, but there's a smart way to fight terrorism, and then there is the Bush-Obama* way. In the end, they will have spent far too much to get far too little. They will not defeat the enemy, but they will bankrupt us. Like cancer cells remaining after the final chemotherapy treatment, the terrorists will then flourish, with little opposition, and we will regret letting our leaders throw money at a problem when outside-the-box solutions could have done far more for far less. (*However, Obama deserves credit for being the only President in history wise enough to realize that our long-term national defense will be strengthened by scaling back the military we now have—military we can't afford.)

Ellen Brown, JD, author of The Web of Debt, reveals how governments use war to economically advance the business interests of the wealthy corporations that use their money to influence politicians.

The rich people who pull the strings of their puppet politicians are very astute masters of manipulation who are always stirring the pot, creating situations in which war seems like the right response. They profit from war directly and indirectly, so they want more of it. Directly, by financing wars and profiting from military contracts; indirectly, by using the military to punish governments that won't cooperate with their sordid plans to rule the world by imposing their rules on the rest of us.

Ron Paul explained why the Tea Party can't fight big government at home while supporting it abroad. Even if you disagree with him on philosophical grounds, as a matter of practicality, we simply cannot afford to be the world's policeman any longer.

If you're fond of nature programs, you likely know that big, tough male animals often defend their access to females and food. However, as those males age, they are more likely to be injured or killed while defending their territory. America is now like one of those aging males: we are past our prime and still capable of putting up one heck of a fight, but not without risking an injury that could prematurely lead to our demise.

The United States cannot afford to do everything it has done in the past. Instead of coming to terms with this economic reality, our kooky leaders are spending money like there is no tomorrow. And there may not be, thanks to them.

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee and the man who Obama initially selected to be Secretary of Commerce, is talking about possible “bankruptcy for the United States. There's no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals which are in this budget over the 10-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt; our dollar will become devalued.”

Senator Gregg said that “we’re basically on the path to a banana-republic-type of financial situation in this country” within 10 years. “We're going to undermine fundamentally the quality of life for our children by doing this. […] It will be hard for our kids to buy a car, buy a house, or send their kids to college. The standard of living will drop.”

The standard of living is dropping. Of all the horror stories I've heard, the only that rattled me the most was hearing a hardworking man I recently met describe how he went from owning a thriving business with 75 employees to selling off his personal assets because he is facing foreclosure and will soon be homeless. Many small, medium, and large businesses that were once successful are now defunct or teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Add in the tens of millions of struggling Americans, and you're forced to conclude that either the American people are stupid or our leaders are. I believe it's the latter.

Our leaders have burdened us with myriad laws and regulations that even they don't understand—or often even bother to read. They've given us byzantine tax code that even mystified Albert Einstein, who said, “The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.” In effect, they've put shackles around our ankles and nooses around our necks, and have the gall to feign surprise when we aren't more prosperous living in a nation in which successful people are penalized and demonized by politicians hoping to impress voters who like work the best when you do it for them—such as Star Parker, who once preferred going to the beach while you paid her expenses.

Author Robert Heinlein said, “It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.” When I wrote True Emergency Room Stories in the 1990s, I was right: America was in a heap o' trouble, and welfare was a big part of it. Giving many millions of people things they did not earn—food, clothing, medical care, college educations, utilities, and even homes—was a recipe for disaster, so when the USA was riding high during the Clinton years, I knew we were headed for a crash. How many economists at that time were saying the same thing? One? Yes, and he was Russian. It's not that I am so perceptive as an amateur economist, but that the professional ones were so obtuse.

Just put 2 and 2 together, and see if they add up to something other than big trouble. I knew the housing bubble was bound to burst years before it did when I witnessed home prices rise to the point that I couldn't begin to afford any of the gargantuan homes springing up like weeds in vast subdivisions that seemed to go on forever in fields that were vacant a few years before. I wondered, “Where do all those people get so much money?” The money bubble, the dot-com bubble, or reinvested profits from the real estate bubble. One by one, they burst. Pop, pop, pop, and our economy deflated.

Voters give too much attention to what politicians say, not what they do. What they do is screw Main Street to benefit people who are allergic to work, fat cats on Wall Street, and myriad special interest groups. Cunning politicians are masters at pitting groups of Americans against each other, so we fight one another instead of them.

Most people want basically the same things: a good job, a nice home and car, peace and security, and a bright future for our children. In spite of those similarities, liberals often say they hate conservatives, or vice versa. Politicians often talk about bringing us together, but they're actually very divisive. They depend on that divisiveness to polarize our nation into groups they can manipulate. They could bring us together if they were smart and cared more about us than themselves. Fat chance of that.

I advocate freedom and fiscal responsibility, not reckless spending that is digging the USA grave. Tax-and-spend liberal Democrats—and big government Republicans—have had a heyday killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, but when our goose is cooked, as it almost surely will be, we won't have money to fund wars, social programs, education, and pork barrel spending for frivolous things like The Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the Montana Sheep Institute, the Reindeer Herder's Association, Hawaiian canoe trips, a Vulcan monument, a rice museum, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and research to see if female co-eds go all the way after drinking beer.

Didn't hear about that research? You can read about it in From Bailout to Bliss. Here's an excerpt that reveals how I mocked Congress for this flagrant waste of money:

If you wish to reuse this image, please contact me first so you can pay the
small licensing fee to the photographer and models, who don't work for free.
I am willing to give away my part (turning their image into a magazine
cover), but I cannot give away their photo, which I paid to use.

Our economy has been kept alive by several bubbles, but they've already popped and are deflating. The Federal Reserve is literally creating money out of thin air in an attempt to buoy our economy, but this government-sanctioned counterfeiting is far more extensive and hence more injurious than criminal counterfeiting. The Federal Reserve is also playing games such as buying our debt, which does as little to enrich us as when a person tries to enrich himself by transferring money from his left pocket to his right pocket. These clear-cut signs of desperation by the Federal Reserve manifest how precarious our economy is. Even Donald Trump spoke of a “death spiral” that may precipitate the economic collapse of the United States.

Republicans are marginally less greedy than Democrats in terms of taxation, yet they are still greedy—and stupid. Both major political parties favor a heavy-handed approach to governing. Rather than looking for innovative ways to provide necessary services and infrastructure at the lowest possible cost, their lock on power is so firmly entrenched that they never perceive a need to think of innovative ways to make government more of a friend and less of a burdensome enemy.

As I explained in From Bailout to Bliss, instead of taxing you, the government could send a check to you every year, and as I explained in my blog, it is even possible to make paying taxes so joyous that one wants to pay even more. However, most people think that medicine must taste bad to be good, so they don't look for outside-the-box ways to improve government, society, and their personal lives. Liked a caged animal that cannot imagine what life is like outside the box it is trapped in, people are born into a system and resign themselves to its many flaws, thinking that's just the way it has to be. No, it doesn't.

An advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in 1997 brilliantly explained how “the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently” who are “crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

We pay attention to people with innovative products, but not those with novel ideas for spurring economic growth. Why?

Our leaders in Washington think they can borrow and spend our way out of debt. What do you think?

Related topics

How most wars could be eliminated

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